In 2003, Metro Portland’s government set out to study the barriers and benefits of donating surplus prepared food. The metropolitan area was throwing away 360 million pounds of food annually. While their overall recycling rate was 57 percent, the diversion rate for food waste was much lower. The solid waste agency wondered what factors motivated restaurants, cafeterias, grocery stores and schools to donate food; and what factors hindered them. At the same time garbage trucks full of food waste were headed to the landfill, the Oregon Food Bank was struggling to find sources of nutritious food. This was when Oregon had one of the nation’s highest rates of food insecurity. As the solid waste agency studied the barriers to food donation for their "Fork It Over" food diversion program, they learned that businesses had many concerns. ·Will we be liable if someone becomes ill after eating this food?·How will we ensure the food will stay in the safe zones (<40 degrees or >140 degrees) until it can be consumed? ·How much additional time and labor will my staff need to spend?·Can someone come pick this up for us? The most surprising point about this story has to do with the perceived benefits, though. When asked what motivated them to donate excess prepared foods, the staff at the restaurants and grocery stores did not say “avoided cost of disposal” or “tax write-off.” Those were attractive benefits Metro Portland had mentioned but not the businesses' main motivation. Most stated that they joined the program because “it’s the right thing to do.” Food service staff disliked throwing away whole pans of lasagna, platters of baked chicken and bowls of salad when they knew many people in the region did not have reliable access to affordable, nutritious food. For those of us who work with businesses to implement energy efficiency, water conservation and waste prevention projects, it is interesting to hear that more than just operational cost savings motivate business leaders. While cost-benefit analysis, net present value and internal rate of return calculations are valuable tools to sell a business on a sustainability project, other factors should be used when discussing the value proposition.Author Bob Willard has done interesting research to calculate bottom-line benefits to businesses that implement sustainability projects. Employee recruitment, attrition and productivity factor into the calculus. So do market share and insurance costs.

In the aggregate, Willard argues that these benefits offer a profit increase of at least 38%. Add to this calculus the difficult to quantify, but nonetheless meaningful, spiritual benefit of being a good steward of our environment for future generations.

For those who try to motivate business managers to implement sustainability projects, broaden the conversation beyond operational cost savings. Some of the benefits listed above may resonate with your target audience and inspire her/him to agree to implement your proposed sustainability project.

Creating a revolving loan fund to train and embed sustainability project managers in small businesses

A few years ago an accounting firm with 80 employees was using office paper at a rate of 200 tons per year. One of the senior managers thought the company could reduce this number and rolled out a comprehensive paper reduction program to all employees. She promised to throw a special party for all employees if the firm reduced paper use by 10% per year. By the next year the firm’s paper use had dropped 40%.

No upfront investment was needed for the accounting firm’s paper reduction program; yet for the project to be successful, the business needed someone embedded in the company to shepherd employees through the change process. The project manager worked with their green team to roll out one paper reduction strategy at a time. She tried to keep communications about the project interesting and fun.

There are opportunities to reduce material inputs, energy use, water use, and waste streams in small businesses across the country. Many government and utility programs reach out to these businesses to encourage them to reduce energy, water and waste. The success of these programs relies on finding someone within each business to manage these sustainability efficiency projects. Job creation

We could create hundreds of good middle class jobs in California, help address climate change, and cut small businesses’ operational expenses with one relatively simple newprogram. I would like to see a revolving loan fund set up to help each small business in California that meets certain criteria hire a sustainability manager. Small businesses are so busy trying to keep the doors open that often they don’t have time to explore operational efficiency. We need them to be more efficient. Not just a little, a lot more. The hope of a stable future climate rests in part on all businesses doing more with less. Zero net energy, zero net water and zero waste are all goals we know how to achieve with proven solutions. We just need someone to work on these projects at every organization.

Picture one person splitting her/his time among two small businesses in the same city for two years. Think of how many energy efficiency, water conservation, waste prevention, alternative commuting, and environmentally preferable purchasing projects s/he could complete in two years.

A state revolving loan fund could pay for their labor. Half of the savings realized from the zero net projects would go back into the revolving loan fund to fund additional sustainability managers. Businesses would keep half of the savings.

Choosing the small businesses

Only some small businesses would qualify. They would need to meet certain thresholds.

I’ve developed the conceptual framework for an algorithm to determine which small businesses would benefit from having a half-time sustainability manager for two years. After all, there would need to be enough potential savings to justify the program’s labor expense.

Number of employees

The U.S. Small Business Administration generally defines a small business as having fewer than 500 employees. According to U.S. Census data, in California there are 65,362 businesses with 20 – 99 employees and 13,168 businesses with 100-499 employees. This algorithm focuses on incorporated small businesses with 25 to 500 employees. While most efficiency opportunities will be at businesses with between 50 and 500 employees, if companies with 25 to 49 employees have extremely high quantities of material inputs, energy use, water use and waste outputs, they could be included in the program. I have interviewed a 40 employee farm that generates 2,000 tons of green waste per year, a 35 employee printing company with large material throughputs and a 40 employee construction firm that was pursuing LEED green building certification. Annual revenues per employee

While conducting research on the conditions that support successful sustainability managers at small businesses, I found that over half of the 50 businesses I interviewed had revenues over $100,000 per employee. Industries represented by these companies with high revenue streams included manufacturing, construction, retail, hospitality, law, accounting and consulting. Their large annual revenues per employee provides them with the cash flow to invest in sustainability projects that offer an attractive return on investment.

Annual energy costs

When facility managers consider which sustainability projects to implement, energy conservation and energy efficiency projects usually rise to the top of the list. This is primarily because energy line item costs are so high compared to the cost of materials, waste disposal and water. Annual water costs

While water costs are a much smaller portion of a facility manager’s budget, they are rising quickly. California continues to struggle with a third year of severe drought and many business sectors are looking for ways to cut water use partly because it’s the right thing to do for the good of all. If a business uses large volumes of water they should be included in this project.

Annual feedstock costs

Manufacturers, construction companies and other businesses with large material throughputs often have opportunities to create more output with fewer material inputs. One candy bar manufacturer for which I did a waste reduction site assessment spent $24,000 on waste disposal and considered that a cost of doing business. Half of the waste in their dumpster was waste candy bars. Reducing their waste stream by half was not interesting to the General Manager until I calculated that they were spending $300,000 on the ingredients that were going into the waste candy bars that were then thrown away. Coincidentally, $300,000 was the cost of a new ultrasonic cutting blade for the manufacturing process which meant a one year return on investment for a piece of equipment that would cut their feedstock costs and their waste dramatically.

Annual cost of solid waste disposal

Many businesses I have worked with have reduced their garbage bills by $10,000s per year by expanding their recycling and waste diversion programs. This is another project that needs someone within the business to set up the new system and educate staff.

Reduced recruiting and training costs

When businesses invest in their employees’ wellness, employee turnover falls, and businesses save money on recruitment and new employee training. One brewery/restaurant I interviewed had high employee turnover. After implementing an employee bicycle purchase program where the company paid half the cost of a new bicycle after six months if that employee agreed to ride it to and from work for 44 trips, their employee turnover rate fell dramatically. In general, employees want to work at companies where they feel management cares about their well-being. Increased sales

Companies are constantly looking for any advantage over their competition. One small manufacturing company I interviewed made bathroom paper towels and toilet tissue. After their sustainability manager presented her new sustainability plan to the company, 50 sales reps sent emails asking for a copy of the slide deck. They wanted to present the plan to their customers to boost sales. Many of their customers or potential customers were large hotels and institutions looking to green their supply chain.

Algorithm

Connect these variables and you have the algorithm that guides whether a small business should pursue hiring a sustainability manager through this program. * If there are 25 < x 500 employees * If the business has > $100,000 of annual revenues/employee * If annual salary and benefits for a half-time sustainability manager = $ net energy savings + $ net water savings + $ net material input savings + $ solid waste disposal savings + avoided cost of recruitment and training + increased sales

Next steps

If properly funded, this project will creatively disrupt the inertia of business as usual. I understand this inertia given how strapped for resources many small business are. Given that small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, we as a nation should be doing more to support them.

Small businesses spend money locally. They pay taxes that support our schools, roads, police and fire departments. They give donations of time and money in their communities, and they are the first ones to hire after each recession.

This sustainability project manager program will help stem the trend of middle class jobs being exported to other countries by making our small businesses more competitive and resource efficient. The question I have is who is in the best position to fund a program that trains thousands of sustainability managers, matches them with small businesses and measures their success.

﻿Two news articles this summer grabbed my attention and have haunted me every since. The first one involves the fact that U.S. businesses are sitting on piles of cash and not spending it. According to National Public Radio’s Marketplace, U.S. businesses have cash and assets totaling $16.4 trillion. Much of this cash was earned abroad and stays abroad. They’re not investing it in the U.S. or abroad. The cash is sitting in bank accounts. The other related article that I keep noodling over was in the New York Times. Neil Irwin’s article “Welcome to the Everything Boom, or Maybe the Everything Bubble.” Irwin laments that every asset class is “expensive by historical standards.” Where can investors put their money that will yield returns that are higher than inflation? He lists New York real estate, French cable companies, stocks and Iowa farmland as examples of assets with high valuations.

I have an idea to invest a tiny fraction of this cash; a place that will yield impressive results in terms of payback and create high quality jobs. Each U.S. business with more than 500 employees should hire a sustainability project manager.

The sustainability manager will be in charge of finding and implementing operational efficiencies. Every business has opportunities to do more with less energy, water, and materials. As someone who has spent most of her sustainability consulting career contracting with government agencies to encourage people within business to implement waste prevention, energy efficiency, water conservation, green procurement, alternative commuting and green building projects; I can report that these projects don’t happen without someone on the inside championing them.

The second sustainability manager can help convey the value proposition of the operational efficiency efforts and make a case for continued funding for their position through cost savings, brand enhancement and improved employee morale.

I have met so many people inside businesses who love doing this type of work. Yet, they are often doing it on borrowed time: on their lunch hours and at night.

Our country should be investing in full-time sustainability project managers for every company. This will create middle class jobs and streamline operations around the country. This is an investment that will yield dividends for generations to come. ﻿

Building a sustainable future happens one sustainability project at a time. There are many opportunities to use energy, water and resources more efficiently at businesses throughout the U.S. that will save money, enhance branding and boost employee morale. For these projects to be implemented, though, someone within the organization needs to spearhead these projects.There are 23 million small businesses throughout the U.S. with fewer than 500 employees. Approximately 20% of those businesses are corporations with employees, as opposed to sole proprietorships, home-based businesses or franchises. These 4.5 million small businesses are busy juggling daily operations, marketing, production, taxes, worker safety, and environmental regulatory issues. Few of them have the resources to implement the energy efficiency, water conservation, waste prevention, alternative transit and green building projects they wish they had time to do.In my recent research project entitled "Conditions That Support Success of Sustainability Project Managers at Small and Medium-Sized Businesses," my research team and I surveyed 126 people who had implemented operational efficiency projects and interviewed 51. Over 60% were implementing these projects on their own time. They revealed the conditions external to the organization, internal to the organization and their skill sets that they felt were vital to their success.Creating a one year sustainability fellowship program for small businesses will help replicate successes like these at other small businesses. Matching funding and one month of training like the AmeriCorp program could train this small army to fan out across the country to implement operational efficiency projects that will make our country more energy independent, water efficient and help build the circular economy that diverts materials from the landfill and back into new products. The benefits to the small business will be not only cost savings, but enhanced branding and a reduction in employee turnover.Small businesses are vital to local economic health and global sustainability. Through this fellowship program, we will train the next generation of sustainability project managers to overcome technical, financial and psychological barriers to change and implement these important operational efficiency projects. With support from local governments, county green business programs, regional utilities, the Small Business Administration and others, we could prove the business model and show that the returns are much higher than the initial investment. Eventually the fellowship program would sunset and businesses would see that investing in their own sustainability manager is worth the cost.

Our research project studied the conditions that support the success of sustainability projects at small and medium-sized businesses. Answers to “What are your organization’s motivations for doing sustainability?” were particularly interesting. The stories that interviewees shared yielded insights that can be used by those working to green the business community further. Cost savings In my waste prevention and energy efficiency outreach work, many businesses have told me they require a two year return on investment (ROI) or better to implement projects. Asking business managers what ROI they expect from a given sustainability project helps clarify expectations for a project up front. Contrast that with the retail lumber company I interviewed for this research project that described their solar photovoltaic project with a seven year ROI as “a cash machine on the roof.” After the $200,000 solar system paid back the initial investment, the company saw the system as “generating money.” Clearly there are more factors at play when people decide whether to pursue a sustainability project than just cost savings.Branding is important too The 107 research survey respondents were allowed to give more than one answer to the question about motivations. A large percentage of survey respondents said reputation and brand strength was important as well as cost savings. Consider consulting firms which have pressure to maximize client work and minimize time spent on non-billable overhead. Environmental consulting firms in particular want to be consistent with their green branding. Yet, someone in the organization must spend time setting up new systems to green operations by volunteering their free time or using non-billable overhead hours. The sustainability coordinator I interviewed at an environmental consulting firm for this project said that when she started working at the firm, each employee was given a $100/month parking allowance. She found the fact that employees were incentivized to drive their cars instead of take mass transit to be appallingly inconsistent with the firm’s brand, especially since there were government subsidies for public transportation available. She set about to flip the incentive system and lower the office’s CO2 footprint. There were some people in the office who resisted losing their parking subsidy for convenience reasons but the sustainability coordinator worked through their objections. She set up access to the ZipCar car sharing program for back up rides home or important client meetings. There were environmentally preferable alternatives to the system that encouraged single occupancy vehicle driving, the management wanted to be consistent with their green branding, and yet someone needed to lead the office through the process of making the changes. Ultimately the sustainability coordinator characterized management’s response to the alternative commute subsidy proposal this way. “They’re super swamped and pulled in a million directions, especially since we are a consulting firm. So it’s not necessarily their priority, but they are definitely supportive if someone else is implementing the project.” In some industries, green projects give employee morale a big boost Employee turnover in the restaurant industry is famously high. One microbrew restaurant implemented an employee bike program to improve employee retention. When the bike program was started, employees were asked to contribute a small amount of money for the bike with each paycheck. After working at the restaurant for 1,000 hours, if an employee agreed to use the bicycle to commute to work at least 45 days/year, they received a new bicycle with the company logo and their name on it. In the past three years the restaurant has purchased 60 bikes for their employees. To make way for bicycle parking, management removed a few car parking spaces. When restaurant guests arrive they see rows of brightly painted bikes out front which lends a welcoming ambiance to the restaurant’s entryway. According to the owner, funding for the program came out of their operations budget. She felt the expense was more than repaid by the boost in employee morale and worker retention. Confirmation that the “right thing to do” is a major factor Above all, the most popular answer to the question “What are your organization’s motivations for doing sustainability” was that it’s the right thing to do. At a different brewery, one that implemented a dimmable LED lightbulb retrofit, the owner frequently asked the Director of Sustainability “What’s the next big thing? Are we doing what we should be doing? Is there any new technology?” Sustainability is a key part of the company’s mission as the owner founded the brewery with a commitment to make 100% organic beer. Sustainability even factors into their hiring. When interviewing potential new employees, the hiring team asks “What do you do at home that is a sustainable action?” The Director of Sustainability said “It’s a very simple filter but it helps ensure that the employees we hire will have an interest in sustainability at work.”Asking for more Over 99% of all businesses in the U.S. are small and understanding what motivates them to implement sustainability projects will be useful as we encourage them to do more. As we can see from this research, there are complex, interconnected factors at work when businesses decide if they will implement operational greening projects. Small businesses are concerned with how their employees view the organization as evidenced by how long their employees work at the organization. They are concerned with how people outside of their organization view them. They are interested in how future generations will view them: if they did enough to help build a sustainable future. At the same time they want to do more with fewer resources and save money so they can be financially sustainable. Whatever each business’s mix of motivations, we know that the business community plays a vital role in building a sustainable future.

At the core, this research project sought to discover which conditions supported successful implementation of sustainability projects at small and medium-sized businesses. The research team at Justine Burt & Associates surveyed 107 people and interviewed 40 who work at businesses with 25 to 1,000 employees. Test subjects had successfully implemented sustainability projects for waste prevention, recycling, composting, energy efficiency or green building certification. Researchers asked about conditions that had supported their success in four categories: forces external to the organization, top management, within the organization, and the sustainability project manager’s skills. Research subjects were found through green business certification programs. They attributed the successful implementation of their program to the following external forces:

Technical expertise (by local government agencies or service contractors)

Financial assistance (from local government agencies or utilities)

Recognition and awards

Regional culture

Top management played an important role in successful implementation. If the people in a position to approve and allocate resources for the project saw value in the project for at least one of the following reasons, the project could move forward with top management support:

Cost savings

Branding

Marketing

Employee attraction and retention

Alignment with company mission or values

Right thing to do

When deciding whether to pursue a new project, management initially performs informal mental calculations about whether the benefits accruing from the change will be greater than the costs of making the change. Humans by nature resist change which results in an underestimating of benefits and an overestimating of costs. This is the reason having someone to manage the change process is vitally important to project implementation. Research subjects attributed project success in part to cross-functional teams like a green team. These teams allow for greater understanding across departments and facilitated collaboration. These functional work groups have spill-over benefits to the businesses’ effectiveness on its primary mission of providing a high-quality good or service. The most striking finding of this research was the key role that the sustainability project manager played in the project’s success. A few skill sets were common among the research’s test subjects:

Communication skills – engaging employees in each department, listening and understanding what employees are struggling with, setting up a structure for collaboration across departments, and being able to sell the value proposition to top management and multiple departments

Technical skills – being knowledgeable on the technology or system to be adopted, being aware of best practices, having strong project management and organizational skills

Financial skills – collecting data, calculating costs and benefits

Research participants mentioned communication skills most often when discussing the most important skills of the sustainability champion. Finally, there was the energy level of the champion that many test subjects identified as critical to success. The sustainability project manager needed to have a passion for sustainability, be patient and demonstrate persistence. More analysis will be forthcoming. This is just a first blush of our findings.

Setting aside for a minute the idea that replacing fossil fuels with clean, renewable alternative energy would be one of the best things we could do to move civilization swiftly in a sustainable direction, there are many small operational sustainability projects at businesses around the country that in the aggregate could make a difference. Projects in energy efficiency, water conservation, green building and waste prevention are building a foundation for a green future.We surveyed over 100 sustainability project managers at small and medium-sized businesses. During the interviews we asked people what they thought the four most important skills of a sustainability project manager were. The word cloud above shows which terms featured most prominently in their answers. Do you gather that technical skills, analytic skills or communication skills of the project manager were most often cited as the reason for their success?

When I lived in Austin, Texas, in the late 1990s, I worked for the state environmental agency fielding questions about regulatory compliance from small business presidents. Most of them ran manufacturing operations and were furious about all the regulations they had to follow. I’d listen to their complaints with thoughtful follow-up questions until they felt they were heard and then their tone would change. “Ma’am, I want to be in compliance. I stay up nights worrying about this. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” During those four years spent working in small business technical assistance I learned how these small business presidents struggled to keep the doors open. Between fulfilling customer orders, marketing, employee health and safety, environmental regulations, taxes and all the other issues they worried about, any efforts to go beyond what was required by law frankly amazed me. With this perspective I’ve been studying sustainability project managers at small and medium-sized businesses. What does it take to implement an energy efficiency, recycling, paper use reduction or green building project at a small business given all the other activities staff is required to do? Small businesses have such limited resources compared to larger companies. Fortune 500 companies frequently have a team of people in various departments who are paid to work on sustainability projects. Large corporations often have people with the title Chief Sustainability Officer or Director of Global Sustainability Operations working to embed sustainability throughout the organization. Multiple conferences, books and websites are dedicated to celebrating large corporate sustainability efforts. Small businesses receive relatively little coverage. Why is this? Partly because the small business executive assistants, marketing managers, and IT staff who lead these projects are squeezing work on them in during lunch hours, after work and on weekends. They care about these projects so much they will give up their free time to do them. We need more discussion on how we can support small businesses to implement operational efficiency projects, also called sustainability projects. In the U.S., small businesses make up 49.2% of private sector employment. They are the engine of the U.S. economy; the first ones to pull us out of a recession every time. To accelerate sustainability in the U.S., moving society to a place where humans live in balance with the environment that supports us, we need to help small businesses adopt operational efficiency projects faster. We need to study what conditions support rapid implementation and disseminate those ideas.

Which approach to implementing environmentally beneficial changes motivates people more: a positive or negative approach? Those of us who have done business auditing for recycling, energy efficiency and water conservation struggle with this question. We wonder if it’s better to frame audit findings as “you could save $20,000 per year by implementing this recommendation” or “you will continue wasting $20,000 per year by not implementing this recommendation.” While the positive frame is the norm, auditors wonder if a negative frame might be more effective. To help answer this question, let’s borrow two different methods for behavioral change, one from the field of organizational development and the other from social marketing. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) springs from the field of organizational development and helps an organization grow from its strengths. People leading appreciative inquiries search for the employees who are extraordinarily productive, people on fire with a sense of purpose. They study the conditions that support these productive staff members’ success so the conditions can be replicated elsewhere in the organization. This process of discovery varies by organization since different variables are in play. By contrast, the approach to behavioral change called Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) is more prescriptive. People applying CBSM know what specific sustainable activities they want people to adopt and identify the potential barriers to adopting that behavior change. Let’s say we want employees to turn off their computers at night to save energy. There may be several reasons why computers are left on:

people forget,

they don’t think computers use much energy,

they don’t know how to change their computer settings,

IT staff ask people to leave computers on at night so they can install security patches and back up files.

By using prompts and education, as well as systemic changes like moving file storage to the cloud, CBSM practitioners can address and overcome each of these barriers. Which approach is more effective to behavioral change: AI or CBSM? This depends on the situation. If we have a prescriptive outcome in mind then CBSM may be more effective; whereas if we want to develop an organization-specific solution organically, AI is a good approach. The “heliotropic hypothesis” borrows its name from the flower called the heliotrope that over the course of a day turns its flowers and leaves toward the sun. This hypothesis states that social forms evolve toward the “light.” Both AI and CBSM seek the sunlight of an effective solution even though they start from different frames.

This infographic shows the stunningly large losses of mostly preventable food waste at each stage in the life cycle of food. Take a look at each stage: production, storage, processing, retail and consumer. Which foods and which stages result in over 25% food loss?